North Carolina

Wesley J. Smith writes a misguided critique of a personhood law recently introduced in South Carolina. First, Mr. Smith shows confusion about the purpose of the bill. Personhood isn’t only a philosophical concept but a legal one. And it’s this second context, not the first, the bill addresses. After all, it is a proposed law, not a philosophical treatise. The only reason the word “person” is important legally is because the due process clause of the constitution only applies to persons.

Second, he states that personhood isn’t the issue but “humanhood”; being human is all that it takes to have rights. The writers of the bill agree with him. That’s why the bill makes legal personhood equivalent to humanhood. What else could possibly be meant by “The General Assembly finds a human being is a person at fertilization”?

Third, Mr. Smith suggests that because the bill “acknowledges all persons are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights”, it unconstitutionally establishes a religion in violation of the First Amendment of the US Constitution. He’s wrong on a couple of counts. You can’t establish a religion if that religion has already been established. Consider the first line of the South Carolina constitution:

We, the people of the State of South Carolina, in Convention assembled, grateful to God for our liberties, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the preservation and perpetuation of the same.

It specifically states that liberties come from God. And it’s those God-endowed liberties that the South Carolina constitution is meant to protect. To put it in Mr. Smith’s terms, the South Carolina constitution “declare[s] that [it] is explicitly based on a religious belief, e.g. that ‘[liberties are] God-given’.”  

Unlike the proposed bill, the South Carolina constitution doesn’t state that human beings are made in the image of God. Mr. Smith claims that it’s this imago dei claim that is unconstitutional because it isn’t shared by all religions. Consider the Indiana state constitution which states:

WE DECLARE, That all people are created equal; that they are endowed by their CREATOR with certain inalienable rights.

And the North Carolina constitution states:

We hold it to be self-evident that all persons are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights

Not all religions recognize a Creator and that human beings are created by that Creator. In Mr. Smith’s words, this recognition “unquestionably turn[s] the law into the establishment of religion, to be specific, Christian and Jewish, since the concept comes from Genesis 1:27.” I doubt the people living in Indiana or North Carolina realize they have a state religion.

On the contrary, merely professing in a preamble a non-universal religious view doesn’t establish a religion. If it did, professing a belief in God and that rights come from God, which the South Carolina constitution clearly does, would also be unconstitutional. Mr. Smith needs to explain how acknowledging that humans are created in God’s image establishes a religion.

In conclusion, Mr. Smith’s critique of the proposed bill doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. The bill properly recognizes all human beings are persons.  It’s recognition that humans are created in the image of God does not establish a religion. It’s a bill all people, including Mr. Smith, should support.